Dragon Dropped S9E19 review · 4:01pm Sep 7th, 2019
What may be our final Rarity episode focuses on her and Spike... and not in a good way.
Let's not mince words, Rarity has taken advantage of Spike for years and it's always been her worst feature in episodes, when she manipulates the little guy into doing things for her. For Rarity to use her looks to manipulate someone else, it's low, but it's not OOC, to be honest. But it's awful with Spike because she repeatedly gets him to do things for her by playing to his crush on her, and she knows he has a crush on her and uses it to control him. Their friendship brings out the worst in her. So an episode that can provide closure to their relationship, either by making it clear they'll always just be friends, or elevating it to a mutual romantic element, is a great thing for the final season.
Unfortunately this is not that episode.
Rarity's bad behavior trend starts right off the bat when the guy is clearly busy with his own life and Rarity ignores him and presumes he'll be happy to drop what he's doing and come with her to get some gems and do the heavy lifting for her. And when he is too busy, we get numerous sequences to demonstrate how apparently without Spike, Rarity is helpless to just go about her normal day, and keeps roping the rest of the Mane 6 into doing his tasks for her, then complaining about how they aren't as good as Spike. Again, this is horrible OOC for Rarity, to take advantage of her friends and take them for granted.
Why is Spike busy? He has a new friend - Gabby. Awesome to see her back, unexpected but great. Rarity is jealous and decides it's time she lets Spike know how much he means to her and how much she values his time...by bribing him with trips and material goods.
The Element of Generosity, everypony!
Rarity comes to the realization she's being awful and purposefully trying to steal Spike back from Gabby, apologizes to them both, and accepts that Spike isn't going to be her damn love slave. I want to care but it's so trite and rushed that it comes off as kinda insincere. I don't buy that Rarity actually has any new appreciation of Spike as a person, the entire episode was framed as her missing having him to do her errands for her and she missed him in that regard, not in the vein of "I don't get to spend time with one of my friends anymore".
The summation of this episode is that we get no closure on Sparity at all, no change in their relationship, no real development from either of them. Rarity just realizes that Spike has his own life separate from her now, sometime that's been apparent for several seasons now. I hope this isn't Rarity's last episode because this leaves a bad taste in my mouth for her.
PS - forgot Rarity's Mane-iac costume in my initial write-up of this review, love it.
PPS - I'm sure this screencap won't be used for nefarious purposes at all.
Unfortunately, this is Rarity's last episode.
Honestly, this episode feels very padded out. The rest of the mane six didn't need to be in this episode at all, and a lot of Rarity's dramatic antics stretched on for too long. Much like "Going to Seed" it feels like an episode that was supposed to just be a solo outing for one character and then they hastily added in another one without bothering to change the script to fit them in.
But quite frankly, we've seen much worse from Rarity. And as cool as it was to see Gabby again, I'm not sure why they brought her back aside from giving us a new ship.
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We have? I was actually just wondering if this is Rarity's worst episode, what else has there been?
5117449 "The Cart Before The Ponies" when she took over Sweetie Belle's cart as a way to avenge her not winning most creative as a filly, blantantly cheating during the race, and not even caring that Sweetie Belle might have been hurt in the crash (Sweetie Belle had a seat on top of the cart that could've caused her to fly off). "Look Before You Sleep" treated her as a child despite her emotional maturity and made her so petty she refused to help until Applejack apologized to her. And debateably "Spice Up Your Life" when she sullied everything she stands for by preaching conformity to standards she knew to be bad.
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Fair all around. I barely remember Cart Before The Ponies and Spice Up Your Life, but yeah that don't sound good.
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The proof lies in the episode using not one but two dialogue-less montages throughout. The last episode to do that, The Point of No Return, was similarly padded too. Even if they usually allow William Anderson to script up some catchy tunes, they rarely reflect well on an episode from a structural sense.
It's good that their relationship didn't develop to a mutual romantic one. If that happened, I would actually be mad at this episode. As it is, I think it's a funny one that taught Rarity that Spike can't just drop everything to help her all the time.
5117453 I think it's great that the show didn't ever try to directly pair up main characters, they just sort of let it flourish in the background. It gave people freedom to ship whoever they wanted with whomever else they desired.
At least they attempted to offer some kind of closure for their relationship especially since Spike having a crush on Rarity has kind of been pushed into the background in recent seasons and mostly ignored. Course I've never really hated the way Rarity acted in these episodes but I've also never viewed the Elements of Harmony as meaning that the characters should be incapable of being any less than perfect when it comes to representing those elements.
While I agree with you, I am not surprised. This is a old story line (a little kid having a "innocent" crush on someone far to old for them that everyone looks the other way on and, no matter what happens, everyone treats like it is the most normal thing in the world) and every time it ends the same way. The little kid in question starts spending time and giving attention to someone else, the older person in question gets jealously does everything they can to get the kid back, usually in the most selfish of ways, then by the end of the episode we get a cheap apology a promise not to take advantage of the kid anymore then we go right back to the status quo.
I wanted MLP to do something different, but I am not that surprise they didn't.
This episode shocked me by making me realize Spabby is not a terrible ship. If someone had written them in a fic, I'da been all, "Nah, miss me bro", but when the show does it? Good idea!
But yeah, I'm starting to think I was too positive in my overall neutral review. :B